Oppose PROTECT-IP Act: U.S. Government Wants To Censor Search Engines And Browsers

We knew that members of Congress and their business allies were gearing up to pass a revised Internet Blacklist Bill -- which more than 325,000 Demand Progress members helped block last winter -- but we never expected it to be this atrocious. Last year's bill has been renamed the "PROTECT IP" Act and it is far worse than its predecessor. A summary of it is posted below.

Senators Leahy and Hatch pretended to weigh free speech concerns as they revised the bill. Instead, the new legislation would institute a China-like censorship regime in the United States, whereby the Department of Justice could force search engines, browsers, and service providers to block users' access to websites, and scrub the American Internet clean of any trace of their existence.

Furthermore, it wouldn't just be the Attorney General who could add sites to the blacklist, but the new bill would allow any copyright holder to get sites blacklisted -- sure to result in an explosion of dubious and confused orders.

The act.demandprogress.org page has more info on the proposed PIPA act, and also Wikipedia has an article on it: Protect IP Act.

Sign the petition if you want the Internet to be free and uncencored in America. The petition is also open to non-US citizens. And you should care even if you live in Spain or in Japan, because this act will have some effects globally because of the US' inflated status.

Censoring the internet is like banning guns; the average law-abiding citizen will be losing something they have a right to use, and the criminals, the people the government thinks it's hurting, are going to keep doing the same shit they've been doing. I can access thousands of illegal files online just as easily as I can obtain an illegal firearm, and if the government takes away my right to get these things legally, I'm going to have them illegally before they even finish signing the bill into law.

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QUOTE (Darth Sexy @ Sep 12 2009, 03:43 AM)

Massacre, you make me look like a rational, moral, kind person.

QUOTE (Marney1 @ Oct 26 2009, 01:22 PM)

Massacre - What you've just posted is sick and disturbing...

QUOTE (ViceMan @ Jan 17 2010, 04:22 PM)

When Massacre is around, everything is violated... Whether it likes it or not.